Great Circle, by Maggie Shipstead (Penguin, $37)

Reviewed by Ron Charles At the centre of this vast story are twins, rescued from a shipwreck as babies: Marian and Jamie Graves. Jamie develops an intense love for the natural world, but his sister, Marian, thirsts for even greater freedom. When she sees a pair of old circus pilots called the Flying Brayfogles, she’s transfixed.

For the rest of her life – and the rest of this novel – Marian will crave the opportunity to fly. That aspiration, powered by her iron will, makes her a pest at the airfield where she begs for lessons.

Soon enough she proves herself a remarkably talented flier. Again and again, though, Marian runs up against the chauvinism and incredulity of male pilots, including an industry just getting off the ground. Even the exigent demands of World War II aren’t enough to open the ranks fully, but Marian still finds a way to participate, so long as she can maintain the image of a proper, patriotic ‘‘girl.’’

Shipstead has boldly complicated this gripping historical novel by weaving in a modern-day story set in Hollywood.

In alternate chapters, a young woman named Hadley plays the ingenue in the wildly popular ‘‘Archangel’’ films (think Fifty Shades of Grey).

The work earns Hadley tens of millions of dollars, but it requires her to participate in a perpetual publicity campaign that eroticizes everything about her while holding her to a standard of quaint fidelity.

When she shatters that image in a night of drunken debauchery, Hadley is summarily fired. Humiliated and out of work, she agrees to play Marian Graves in an artsy film based on the lost aviator’s life.

When Hadley gets serious about discovering the real story of Marian, the novel’s parallel stories begin to resonate with each other in interesting ways. Though separated by decades, the aviator and the actress are both powerful women, rising from devastating tragedies to forge their own way.